


in all the ways that count

by fallencrest



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 04:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5034277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallencrest/pseuds/fallencrest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ice is the one place where magic doesn't matter. It's not a coincidence that it's also Sid's favourite place. (An AU where the world has changed but hockey hasn't.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	in all the ways that count

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).



When the change swept in on a mist of yellow smog off the Atlantic, almost everything had altered with it. Things were different, people were different. School curricula shifted, subjects displaced or enhanced in light of the things people did differently now. Some sports changed, too, rules amended to cover different eventualities, leagues split into those who could and those who couldn't do the sort of things which would have been incredible before but which had now become just another part of life. 

Hockey stayed the same though. 

It's debated later, debated pretty regularly, whether hockey ought to move with the times. There are those who call Bettman a reactionary and a fool but, to those who love the sport, it really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that NFL games now take advantage of time-perception freezes to speed through time-outs or that they allow athletes of all abilities – including the magical and mutated kinds. Hockey is still hockey, at least as long as Bettman continues not to age. (There are bets on that with some pretty varied odds but it's hard to say at this stage who'll be alive to have the last laugh.)

Hockey is pure and clean of all the things which came with the change. Anyone can play, even guys who can do things they shouldn't be able to; but arenas are staffed by linesman who know how to spot and check any non-regulation behaviour. There are dampeners in place, wards on the doors and detectors on all the public entrances to stop anything from getting in which might influence the game. The allegations of potential tampering never quite go away but there have only been a handful of suspensions since the rules came in.

 

The TSN story runs on a Tuesday in March, just as Pittsburgh are fighting to hold their position in the conference standings and cement a playoff spot. It's an off-day, thankfully, but that doesn't mean Sid doesn't have to hear all about it in the locker room at practice.

“They're accusing you again?” Flower asks, once the chirps and jokes have died down.

“Yeah,” Sid says, the tired resentment clear from his tone. 

“Shit,” Flower says, “you think they know you're actually one of the most mundane guys in the league?”

“Probably,” Sid says though he doubts it.

It isn't public knowledge and he's fought to keep it that way. No-one needs to know what he can or cannot do. He'd hoped that the media would just accept that he's a private kind of a guy and leave it at that. In reality, it has meant he's spent his career under a cloud of speculation that he's actually an immensely powerful magician, able to hoodwink even the NHL's expert spotters and get past all the guards. Sometimes he thinks just telling them the truth would be easier but it feels too much like a matter of principle for Sid to let it go that easily.

“Though this one's actually about how apparently the fans cast some kind of charm on me and that's why I do so much better at home games.”

“Seriously?” Flower asks, looking a little incredulous as he leans back in his stall.

“Yeah,” Sid says, “I think Giroux meant it as a joke but that's the media for you, so now I've gotta get another full check over from a bunch of guys from the League office. All to show how seriously they take this.”

“Fuck Giroux, man,” Flower says, shaking his head. 

 

The inspection this time around is actually relatively okay, on the scale of these things anyway.

There had been one time when the operator of one of the detectors had been comically insistent that the machine was broken because he just wasn't getting a read at all. Sid had spent a good ten minutes trying to convince him that, no, that was a normal reading for him. 

It had taken Sid making the guy run the test on himself before he'd come around and said, “Wow, man, you're like a dead zero on that thing. It's like you're not even alive or something.”

Sid hadn't really known what to say to that – slightly worried that they'd start testing to make sure he wasn't actually undead if he so much as cracked a joke about it. 

He was used to it by then though. It's not as though he's one-in-a-million. (There are a lot of people out there who don't have anywhere near enough juice to make any kind of impact with whatever psychic read they put out.) He just also kicks out an anomalously dead score on certain kinds of detectors in a way most people don't – as though even most totally mundane people soak up some residuals from their environment while Sid just doesn't.

 

Geno's waiting for him after practice and they're almost completely silent as Geno drives him home.

“Okay, Sid?” Geno asks after a while.

Sid doesn't answer at first, too busy staring at a street performer juggling fire which changes colour every time it changes hands. 

“Sid?” Geno asks again.

“I hate this,” is all Sid says back. 

“Everyone is jealous because Sid best,” Geno says, “is okay, I know Sid never cheat.”

Sid smiles at him then and their eyes meet in the rear-view mirror. 

“Except diet,” Geno adds, “Sid always cheat for candy.”

Sid laughs at that, a near-braying sound which catches in his throat and makes Geno laugh, too.

 

At practice, the morning of game day, Flower's levitating a puck a couple of inches over his glove, barely watching as he makes it swirl and loop. He'd told Sid once that when he'd played goalie as a kid, he used to make a forcefield around the goal sometimes and make all the pucks deflect off subtly enough that the other kids just thought they were terrible shots. It seems like a lot of guys have stories like that. 

ESPN had run an issue on guys in sport who had special skills. It had included somewhat dismissive comments from Pavel Datsyuk that he was not, in fact, called the Magic Man because of anything other than his hockey but there had also been a piece on how the Sedin twins' psychic connection was so strong that they had to take suppressants before games. That was pretty widely known in the league, though the part which had interested Sid was that they apparently found the suppressants to be a boon. “It is like being only one person,” the article had quoted Henrik Sedin as saying, “very strange – but good, too. Hard not to know where he is but we have learned to compensate for that now.”

There had also been a big spread on Seguin which only confirmed a handful of the rumours from his days with the Bruins. The article included the admission that Tyler Seguin has, in his own words, “a charm thing” but didn't exactly explain how it worked or what its scope was. It didn't touch on the unconfirmed rumour that he'd been run out of Boston after getting the entire Bruins roster involved in a happy poly-amorous set-up with Seguin at the centre. Sid has never been exactly sure of how that would be grounds for taking Seguin out of the equation as, that being the case, getting rid of him seemed to him a likely way to upset all remaining members of your team – but that's also why Sid tries not to set too much store by rumours, especially ones which don't add up. Still, it seems like pretty much everyone who's ever met Seguin off-ice has experienced his charm in some measure, so Sid had known about that long before ESPN decided to print it. 

Still, he wonders sometimes, vaguely, what proportion of guys in the league do have something up their sleeves aside from mad stick-handling skills. Only the thing he loves about hockey is that it's one of the few places where that actually doesn't matter.

 

They beat the Flyers 4-2 and Geno manages a whole series of barely-legal checks on Giroux without drawing a single penalty. 

Sid's impulse is to be glad about it, to brim with something like gratitude and appreciation for Geno, but it's his responsibility to keep his team from being needlessly reckless, so he scolds Geno over it as lightly as he thinks he reasonably can get away with.

Geno frowns and says, “Giroux hurt Sid, so I'm hurt him back.” He shrugs, as though this is perfectly obvious and standard procedure. 

Sid gives him a warning about how it could have cost them the game without really meaning it; and he thinks Geno can tell from his face that he's not actually angry because Geno hip-checks him gently and says, “Come on, time for home.”

 

“Sometimes, I think you're the best thing I have, other than hockey,” Sid tells him after dinner that night, sitting on Geno's couch with bad TV on low in the background.

“Because I'm most handsome in all NHL?” Geno asks.

“No,” Sid says, though he's smiling.

“You think I'm not most handsome?” Geno says, mock wounded. After a slight pause, he adds, “Am better than Ovekchin,” making them both laugh. 

There's quiet for a while afterwards until Sid speaks again. “Doesn't it bother you,” Sid asks, “that I can't-”

“No.” Geno says, “Sid best at hockey, so Sid best teammate.”

“But not everything in life is hockey.”

“Wow, should I call media?” Geno jokes, “Sidney Crosby says 'more to life than hockey'. Will be _big_ headline.”

“Shut up, you know what I mean.”

Geno shrugs. “Hockey better than magic trick. Sid better than magic trick.”

Sid can't help but wonder sometimes what his life would be like without hockey, whether part of the reason he's shaped himself around hockey is because it's the one place where it never mattered whether he could do magic or not. 

Some guys got into hockey because they could do magic and, as kids, playing for fun, it made it easier. There are countless guys like Flower who can make big or small changes to where the puck ends up through telekinesis and then there are the guys who became enforcers because they couldn't feel it when they got hit. Those guys had had to grow into pro-hockey learning not to rely on those skills but some thrive on the difference that the dampeners make, increased adrenaline and a whole new way to play. But Sid got into hockey because, for all that people played by their own rules on the pond or in their backyards, he knew that even in the junior leagues, regulations meant that not having any magic wasn't going to hold him back. 

There are days when he almost resents the fact that he can't tell how much of his love of hockey is a love of the game and how much of it is a love of being able to excel by just being himself; but on the good days, he knows it doesn't matter. He's good at hockey, great at it even, and he gets to play with these amazing, phenomenal players and none of them seem to remark or care that he never shows any signs of having magic off the ice. 

“You know,” Geno says, “almost every guy in league would trade to be best like Sid. Is not such big deal,” he adds, opening his palm slowly and making strange swathes of iridescent colour swim before Sid's eyes. “Hockey better,” he adds, shifting close to Sid so that they're shoulder-to-shoulder, “Sid better.”

Sid closes his eyes and makes a humming noise in the back of his throat and when he opens them again, Geno's looking at him. 

“Sid?” Geno says, half a question, turning himself a little so they're almost face to face on the couch.

“Yeah,” Sid says, holding eye contact in a way he's used to avoiding. 

Geno leans in a little and Sid mirrors him. The kiss is brief and a little awkward but they're both smiling ridiculous, irrepressible smiles when they pull away. And Sid thinks, maybe, he really does have everything he needs.


End file.
